Why WiFi will never be a wide area network...and...eating real German food
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OK. First the food part. As a wireless engineer, I was shocked, in 1990, when upon landing in Germany I thought to myself "..I've never seen so many Mercedes without car phones". Of course, my throughts were of LA and AMPS. This was pre-GSM. That was my job - design a GSM network for Germany. in 1990 nobody had heard of GSM. I worked for Mannesmann mobilfunk (D2 - now called Vodafone) who had, thanks in part to my firm..LCC, won the D2 beaurty contest. OK. I worked in the Mannesmann office and ate the cafeteria food for 3 DM/day. My favoriate was "schweinehexe"...pig knuckle. Today, in Stuttgart, 13 years later...I had...Schveinehexe! as good as I remembered it.


Now, the WiFi pathetic part. People...Please...Wifi is great in my home in Del Mar and in businesses, but..for pay?? If I can manage it I'll post this over WiFi (BT Openzone..from theairport Hilton at Heathrow ) but what a joke! I checked in and asked about this service. They charged me 15 pounds ($25) for 24 hours. OK. The guy at the front desk was no radio engineer and put me in a room...50 feet from the access point (see photo below)...but... with a vertically polarized antenna it would never work. I knew it. And sure enough, I've spent the evening in the lobby where it does work. When will they ever learn???